An Undeniable Nightmare
by Ladybug21
Summary: One day, Erik wakes up with... well, let's just say an outlook on life he thought he'd NEVER have. Rather distressing encounters with both Raoul and Nadir ensue, and Erik finds himself increasingly unnerved. Humorously slashy, for those who dare to read


This is a rather demented, totally-not-serious oneshot that a friend, in jest, challenged me to write. Just posting it for giggles... and I'm sorry if it offends anyone, I really am!

Obviously, I don't own any of the characters.

* * *

An Undeniable Nightmare

One day Erik woke up gay.

It was not a change he had expected. The morning felt no different, and at first, Erik felt as he always did when he woke up, precisely at 8:15 in the morning (which is when Carlotta always promptly began her incessant wailing). At the first shrieky high C, Erik's eyelids stirred; with a groan, he grabbed his pillow, stuffed it firmly over his ears, and flipped over onto his stomach with the pillow over his head. However, after a few seconds, he realized as always that it was no use to try to block out the noise, and, grumbling ominous threats under his breath, he rolled out of his comfortable bed and onto the red Persian carpet that cushioned the floor of his underground lair.

Erik stood up slowly and stretched him arms above his head, yawning loudly. Around him, he could hear only the drip of stalactites and the occasional splash of whatever fish lived beneath the Opéra Garnier. He kept his eyes closed, straining to hold onto the last residual feelings of the most lovely dream he had been having. It had involved making love, he could remember that much, and, logically, that meant that Christine had been involved. Erik grinned to himself and wriggled his toes, recalling the vivid images in his imagined tryst - the smell of perfumed hair, the sighs, the whispered words of love, the rock-solid abs...

Wait, thought Erik with his eyes still closed, his forehead crinkling into a frown. Christine did NOT have rock-hard abs. She had a lovely, slim figure, to be sure, but that kind of muscle simply didn't appear on women...

Erik's eyes flew open as he reached the next step in his reasoning, and he stammered and choked slightly at the thought. Had he been dreaming about a MAN? Erik shook his head wildly, trying to dispel that horrific possibility, and promptly went running about the underground lair, clutching his head while half-singing the word "NO!" over and over, until finally he could find nothing better to do than to plunge his head into the icy water of the lake. But even this could not erase the notion from his mind, and Erik was forced by necessity to eventually drag his head out of the lake, coughing and sputtering. In a state of abject misery, he sat glumly by the side of the lake, his arms around his knees.

Erik usually avoided looking at his reflection in the lake, but today he steeled himself and peered down at the water. Same old self... same lack of nose, same parchment-like skin, same dark penetrating eyes (he HAD always been rather fond of his eyes). _Now what man could EVER fall in love with a face like THAT?_ Erik asked himself, slightly more cheerful now that he had a basis on which to dissuade himself from thinking homosexual thoughts. The next second Carlotta hit a particularly piercing note that sounded more like a chicken being slowly strangled than the finish to a Gounod aria, and Erik scowled. Then again, what _woman_ could ever fall in love with him, either? Erik huffed, reasoning to himself that Christine was (almost) completely in love with him for his _personality_, and, consoled with this thought, he mentally added "Kill Carlotta" to his to-do list for the day, and got dressed.

* * *

Erik was good at convincing himself of things, and by the time he emerged from one of his many secret entrances into the foyer of the Opéra Garnier, he was whistling a cheerful tune. Of COURSE he was in love with Christine, and only Christine... for how many years had he been obsessively stalking her now? Ah, yes, there was no possible way he could ever choose another's lips over those two full red petals from which issued her vibrant voice... and her soft, brown eyes, her full, voluminous curls...

Perhaps Erik had just been imagining it, but he could have sworn he just saw a swirl of lace whip behind the corner at the far end of the foyer. He knew it had been Christine, he could just _feel_ it. Eager to reveal to her his rapture, his utter longing and devotion to her, Erik sprang silently across the foyer into the shadow of an ornamental column, took a deep breath, and then leapt from behind the column, catching the lacy figure in his arms.

To his utter surprise, Christine slapped at his face; he lost his balance, and the two of them toppled over onto the marble floor in a mass of billowing cloth and limbs. Erik swore loudly and then pushed himself up onto an elbow to apologize to Christine and to ask why on earth she had slapped him. And that was when he realized, with a sting of embarrassment that felt like a blow to his stomach, that the lace-and-velvet-clad figure he had assumed to be Christine was none other than his archrival for her affections: Raoul, the Vicomte de Chagny.

"I beg your pardon," sputtered the Vicomte in a state of ruffled indignation, "but who the hell are you, and what on earth makes you think you can just go crashing into people as you please?"

Erik rose to his feet, panting slightly and glowering at his enemy.

"I didn't _mean_ to knock you over," he said with as much dignity as he could muster. He purposefully did not offer an apology.

"Well, it's quite rude," continued Raoul. "You ought to watch where you're going."

Erik considered for a moment pulling off the mask and revealing to the fop a sight that would surely give him nightmares for the next few decades, but at that moment the Vicomte began to scramble to his feet, and Erik found himself tensing at the sight of the man's rather firm _derriere_, which was thrown into high relief through his lavender tights.

"Staring isn't too polite either," added Raoul as he straightened his lacey frill and brushed a few flecks of dirt from his velvet overcoat.

Erik shook himself, wanting to scream. Oh god, had he really just been admiring the VICOMTE DE CHAGNY'S BUTTOCKS? He clenched his teeth, trying with all his might to acknowledge what he had subconsciously known since he woke up that morning: that he had been having sexual fantasies about the greatest fop in the world...

"_Sacre bleu_," gasped Raoul as he finished retying his hair back with a black satin ribbon. "So you're the spectre everyone in the bloody opera house's been going on about, are you?"

"Here, in the flesh," growled Erik, wondering if he should just kill Raoul here and now, and then wondering if he'd really be able to do such a thing. The man really was like a work of art, as perfectly built as a Grecian statue made of marble, and, sadly, with matching mental abilities.

Raoul gave Erik a scrutinizing look that made the so-called Opera Ghost's hair stand on end. What was the Vicomte thinking? Surely he couldn't guess Erik's obsession with Christine just by looking at him? Or, even more pertinent, the inexplicable but growing desire the Phantom was feeling for this dolt and his muscular rear end? Anxious to divert attention from any awkwardness his manner may have been displaying, Erik cleared his throat loudly.

"I believe you yourself just said it's rude to stare, Monsieur le Vicomte," he said pointedly.

"What's behind the mask?" asked Raoul in fascination.

Erik grinned mirthlessly. "Wouldn't you like to know." He recalled that Christine was always asking the same question, and he decided that the mask probably added to his mysterious allure.

"I assume it's because you're deformed," said Raoul.

"Or else because I'm so breathtakingly handsome I need to wear the mask to ward off all the girls," retorted Erik, bristling. A second later, he felt like slapping himself... how stupid could he possibly sound?

"Hm," said Raoul, not looking terribly convinced. "Well, sorry to say I can't hang around to see if you're lying or not... I've got a beautiful young soprano to meet after rehearsal." And, sporting a goofy grin, the Vicomte swept down the hallway in his velvet and lace, leaving the stupefied Phantom staring after him.

_Damn you_, thought Erik, disgusted but not at all surprised to realize that his anger stemmed not from Christine's disloyalty to him, but more to the fact that Raoul obviously found her to be more attractive than he found Erik to be, mysterious allure be damned. Erik slapped himself in the mask several times, trying to whack some sense into his head, until he finally realized that he was undeniably gay for the Vicomte and instead opted to return to his lair and sulk.

* * *

"Get the hell out of here," snarled Erik when he stormed into his lair with the intention of burning his figurines of Christine in effigy, only to find Nadir reclining casually on his sitting room sofa.

"Delighted to see you too, Erik," replied the Persian in that infuriatingly superior way he had about him. "Bad day, it appears? What, has the Vicomte got his hands on your soprano again?"

"Yes," huffed Erik through gritted teeth. "I should kill him."

"Be my guest," said Nadir cheerfully, plucking a juicy red apple from the fruit bowl on the table next to the sofa and crunching into it. "I find him to be quite a bother, so if you're going to go all homicidal on me, he's the one person in all Paris I wouldn't object to..."

Nadir cut himself short as Erik slammed his fists against the wall, his chest heaving in an effort to hold back tears.

"Erik?" asked the daroga cautiously.

"I _hate_ him!" Erik wailed in an animal's cry.

"We've been through this many times before," began Nadir in the tone one would use to comfort a squalling baby, "and I've told you time and time again that violence is never the..."

"You don't understand!" groaned Erik, slumping onto the sofa next to his friend and covering his mask with his hands.

"Try me."

Erik paused. On second thought, maybe this wasn't something he wanted to share, much as he was longing for Nadir's advice (in case there was some sort of ancient Persian medicine for curing rampant homosexual desires).

"Come on, Erik," said Nadir with just a touch of annoyance, drumming his fingers on the table with one hand and waving his apple about with the other. "You _know_ that I'm the most trustworthy person you know, that I NEVER tell secrets, and that I'll find out somehow, sometime."

"Oh?" asked Erik savagely, annoyed to death that the Persian did indeed somehow manage to discover all of his secrets eventually, no matter how hard he attempted to hide them.

"Better sooner than later." Nadir shrugged. "At least you'll get it off your mind."

Erik opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, and sighed. "God damn you, Nadir," he said finally.

"We're infidels to each other, therefore in your God's eyes, I'm already damned," Nadir reminded him. "Are you going to tell me, or no?"

Erik closed his eyes. "I think I'm in love, Nadir."

Nadir's eyebrows shot up. "With Miss Daaé? I never would have guessed."

"No, NOT with Miss Daaé, and that's the trouble," snarled Erik. "With her stupid fiance, the Vicomte de Chagny."

Nadir had seen and heard many strange things in his life. Nonetheless, his jaw dropped open and hung there for several seconds before the daroga burst into raucous peels of laughter that probably could have been heard from the orchestra pit, had anyone been there to listen.

"Oh, shut up," growled Erik, tossing his Punjab lasso half-heartedly around Nadir's neck and pulling it taut slowly enough that Nadir could get his hand inside the loop before it strangled him. "If you're not going to tell me how to fix it, you can get out of my lair, thank you very much."

Nadir remained doubled over with silent guffaws for several seconds longer, his dark face an impressive shade of purple as his felt hat fell to the floor. Finally, he managed to calm down enough to straighten up and look at Erik.

"Erik, my poor friend, there IS no way to 'fix it,' as you put it," he explained through momentary fits of giggles, his eyes twinkling. "Love strikes in odd ways; in fact, there's a quote in the Quran..."

"There's no way to fix it?" repeated Erik hollowly, his face assuming an empty expression usually seen only when La Carlotta was unintentionally mutilating Mozart.

"None at all," Nadir insisted.

"Damn it all!" hissed Erik. "Well, what am I to DO, Nadir?"

Nadir shrugged. "Seduce him, kill him, something of that nature, I suppose. That's what you're best at, you know."

"He's a FOP," Erik pointed out unnecessarily. "AND he happens to be engaged to my protegée."

"Well, you _could_ always find a different man to take as a lover," Nadir said off-handedly, causing Erik to flinch in mild disgust. "Unless, of course, you're mostly straight and it's simply the Vicomte's girlish hair and fashion sense that appeal to you..."

"I don't think so," Erik admitted begrudgingly.

"Really," said Nadir, interested. "So it IS the... er, male figure that attracts you, then."

Erik made a noncommittal noise in his throat.

"Not sure? Well, there's only one way to find out." And, to Erik's shock, Nadir rose from the sofa and began to pull off his clothes one article at a time. "Oh, cheer up, Erik," Nadir said in exasperation, slapping his felt hat onto the head of the bewildered Phantom. "Making love to gloomy, self-pitying imbeciles is never much fun at all. Get your clothes off now, come on, no need to be shy... hm, but keep the lasso, could spice things up a bit. And take off that mask, too. I think it'd be much more exciting that way..."

And Erik, drawn by some sort of irresistible force that his reason fought against kicking and screaming, but with which his body agreed quite readily at the sight of the half-dressed Persian, obeyed.


End file.
